The Eiras Contract
Over the lengthy years and divergent dimensions of his life, Blaine has carried many titles and won many battles. To most of the GCPS though, he is a master criminal with a litany of charges standing against him. His origins and motivations are a mystery to all, but there is one thing that everyone from the Council of Seven to the lowliest factotum knows about Blaine. He gets things done.
Contact was made in an unusually direct manner. Aboard his starship, the Conqueror, a vessel capable of travelling through not only space but temporal and dimensional barriers, Blaine’s latest plotting was interrupted by an incoming transmission on a low energy but highly targeted frequency. The very fact that someone – anyone – could even find him, let alone have the nerve to beam a message straight at him, was intriguing enough to warrant Blaine’s attention.
A conversation began and a deal was proposed.
Valuable research had been stolen and damages incurred. What had been taken had to be retrieved and the guilty party punished. The client? A low-profile medical outfit on the verge of an antiviral breakthrough. A minnow in the corporate ocean with no teeth of its own, but one with the money to at least hire some. The target – none other than Mazon Labs, one of the big players in the GCPS. A bully who had seen the chance to take someone else’s work for their own gain and now stood in need of a black eye.
The client wanted their research files returned intact and any copies deleted from a laboratory hidden on Eiras. Violence would almost certainly ensue, but, to access the site and get past the first levels of security unhindered, the client would supply a Mazon Labs shuttle and verified credentials. Acquiring these had not been easy, Blaine was told, but the client had an ace up its sleeve - an insider. Emilia Becht, a Mazon employee, had been bought, promised enough credits to betray her bosses, but on one condition. She would need to be extracted too.
Only the price remained. 300 million megacredits was the initial offer, plus all the tech Blaine could loot from the site. Eventually, he settled for 400 mill and the tech.
All he needed now was a team.
Firepower would be necessary, obviously, and some brains. Technical ability too, and a backup plan, a contingency for the unexpected. Because if there was one thing Blaine knew about the GCPS, it was that things were never quite as simple as they seemed.
His mind made up, Blaine began to make some calls.

The Target
In days long passed, Eiras was important. It was a place where people came to make their fortune. Located on the edge of the third sphere of corporate expansion, its wealth of rare mineral ores made it the site of some of the most successful mining ventures in the GCPS’s history. But times change, and so does the GCPS. Now, the most profitable exploitable assets are located further out towards the fringe, in the wild and untamed fourth and fifth spheres, and Eiras is largely forgotten. Hollowed out and abandoned, out of the way, yet accessible from the Core. Eiras is the perfect place for a corporation like Mazon Labs to carry out its most clandestine works. The prison-planet of Perestia is its closest inhabited neighbour and no-one goes there by choice.
So, Eiras is now registered as a warehouse world, a place to store excess stock or raw materials destined, eventually, for manufacturing plants elsewhere in Mazon’s holdings. The occasional movement of shuttles and starships in and out of its orbit raises no questions. But beneath the storerooms and warehouses of this innocuous front lies a sinister network of laboratories and workshops that can only be accessed by personnel with the highest levels of security clearance. Only the most dangerous – and possibly illegal – research in the galaxy goes on in a place so well hidden and isolated.

The Plague
The Plague is a mutagen, a biological agent of as yet unknown origin, with the capacity to utterly overwhelm and transform almost every living creature in the galaxy. Already it has laid waste to dozens of corporate worlds, turning their inhabitants into its own monstrously deformed foot-soldiers before setting them loose on their neighbours. Officially it does not exist, and there is no record of it in publicly available records. Privately, the Council of Seven is acutely aware of the danger it poses to their power and to the galaxy itself. Their primary response has been one of containment - infected worlds simply disappear, their locations digitally scrubbed from navigational records and their populations sealed off behind a physical wall of heavily armed Enforcer warships. All those infected - or at risk of infection - will eventually die in isolation. But this strategy is not the end of the Council’s efforts. Vector-P, a protein complex that somehow has the power to provide immunity to the Plague, even to repel the infected, has now been identified in a small portion of the population of the GCPS. If it could be isolated and reproduced, it might lead to a cure for the contagion. Alternately, it might give its owners mastery over the Plague, allowing them to control it and the infected for their own ends. The Council will stop at nothing to obtain this power. Nor is there any length to which they will not go to prevent it falling into anyone else’s hands.


The Team

Captain Erika Dulinsky
The nickname ‘Captain’ or ‘Cap’ is a well-earned one. As an officer in the Reiker Corporation’s armed forces, Dulinsky served on a dozen worlds and through three separate campaigns. Those who knew her in those days say she served with honour and distinction. Most famously she saved the lives of a dozen wounded marines when she dragged several out of the line of fire of an Orc heavy gun emplacement. Dulinsky then returned to the position with her men’s grenades on her webbing and destroyed it. She subsequently engaged and destroyed two more, similar emplacements. The exact circumstances of her dismissal from Reiker are unclear - her records remain classified. Some say she was fired for insubordination. Others that she simply realised there was more money to be made soldiering as a mercenary. Whatever the case, her leadership and tactical skills place her in high demand amongst military freelancers and her bravery and calmness under fire make her an invaluable teammate.

Combat Utility Robot B07153 – ‘Curby’
Combat Utility Robots are found throughout corporate space and are designed as modular support ‘bots for organic fighting forces. Designs vary across manufacturers but operational flexibility is a requisite of construction. Some work as ordnance disposal ‘bots, others as haulers, carrying or towing gear. Basic medical units are understandably popular in the hottest warzones but models with breaching equipment - physical and electronic - have found increasing use in bunker-clearance and ship-to-ship actions. CURs have limited artificial intelligence. They are able to receive and process verbal and visual instructions. Their conversational skills are generally limited though - they tend to be almost exclusively task-oriented. That said, behavioural ‘quirks’ have been reported amongst older or battle-damaged units.

Francesco ‘The Devil’ Selvaggio
Francesco Selvaggio was once a decent soldier - capable, though not particularly disciplined. He served with a number of different corporate outfits, his highest rank held being a sergeant with Klinser Corp forces in their war on Stone’s World. Selvaggio was a special forces operator with Klinser, having demonstrated a predilection for close combat knife work and demolitions. Klinser’s campaign was controversially thorough, vicious even, but ultimately successful. And yet, Selvaggio was dismissed from the company shortly before their final push into Argo City. One rumour has it he was involved in a smuggling operation, flying looted art and valuables out of Argo before Klinser could capture them. Another says it was vulnerable refugees Selvaggio was moving offworld. Whatever the actual truth of the matter is, Selvaggio had already earned his nickname, ‘The Devil’, for his part in the fire-bombing campaign that laid waste to Argo’s twin, New Rhodes. Since that dismissal ‘The Devil’ has made his way through the universe working for practically anyone with the credits to pay for his services, be they rebels, corporate snatch teams, or worse.

Wrath
To date, there has only ever been one Judwan recorded as being capable of violence. Given how dangerous Wrath is, this is probably a very good thing. Taken from his home and pod at a young age, Wrath was subjected to a long and arduous training program, similar to that experienced by recruits to the Enforcer Corps and designed to turn him into a killer. The program worked. Too well, perhaps. During his first ‘demonstration’, Wrath broke free from his restraints and killed not only his guards but an observing member of the Council of Seven. He is now one the most wanted beings in the galaxy. Using the golden jian sword he took from the Council-member’s corpse and clad in the armour he wore on the day he was unleashed, Wrath has become a soldier of fortune, an assassin, and a rogue. He can appear unstable, utterly reckless or even violently unpredictable. But there is a method in his madness. Wrath seeks always the truth of what was done to him when he was young and to have his revenge on those that tortured him.

Ogan Helkkare
Ogan Helkkare is a rare thing in a vast galaxy: a Forge Father who has made his home within the GCPS. From his workshops on the world of Gelgar II, Helkkare has made a living using his hands and his mind to engineer everything from weapons engine parts. Though he grumbles that neither the materials nor machinery available to him in the GCPS are the equal of what he could find in the Star Realm, his hand-crafted creations are easily superior to anything made by a corporate factory. Ogan would, in truth, gladly return to life aboard a Ward ship. But, he cannot. He is an exile, spurned by his clan for his part in the disastrous collapse of the Forge Star being built around the star ‘Ekkri’, doomed to live a life away from his kin and kind. There is more to his tale than a failed career as Huscarl and engineer though, for Helkkare is not his birth name. Ogan was born a Krestursson and is a cousin to Lord Ingulf Krestursson, chief of his clan. Some might once have even said Ogan was the rightful heir to Lord Magnus Krestursson. But a Helkkare is nothing and holds no titles. All he can do is whatever he must to survive amongst men.

Alyse
Like so many of her race, Alyse has lived much of her life in the shadows. But Alyse has not done so out of fear. Recruited as a young adult into the Rigel Syndicate, one of the most notorious blade gangs in the Third Sphere, Alyse trained under the legendary Master Tung. She quickly became an expert thief and a formidable fighter, freely using her ability to drain the lifeforce of her opponents and use it to heal her wounds and those of her comrades. She views the rest of the Kayowa with a mixture of pity and disdain. While they hide their features with prosthetics or live in seclusion from other races, Alyse feels she has taken ownership of who and what she is. And, while it is still true that others might be distrustful of her, there is no doubt in Blaine’s mind at least, that she will play an important role in the job on Eiras.